April 23 News: UN Chief Calls For Doubling Of Renewable Energy By 2030

A round-up of the top climate and energy news stories. Please post more links below.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon made a call to double global consumption of renewable energy over the next two decades in order to ensure sustainable economic development. “It’s possible if we show political leadership,” Ban said about the goal that falls under a sustainable energy initiative aiming to have universal access to power by 2030. Currently, renewable energy accounts for about 16 percent of world consumption. [AFP]

If you want to appreciate what Barack Obama is up against in 2012, forget about the front man who is his nominal opponent and look instead at the Republican billionaires buying the ammunition for the battles ahead. [New York Magazine]

Researchers have found that climate change is likely to have far greater influence on the volatility of corn prices over the next three decades than factors that recently have been blamed for price swings — like oil prices, trade policies and government biofuel mandates. [New York Times]

Researchers warned that global warming threatens the water supply for urban communities in Arizona, in a new report funded by the Department of Commerce. [The Oklahoman]

A simmering trade dispute is highlighting a debate about the kinds of jobs America can sustain in a greening economy. [Los Angeles Times]

Researchers have uncovered a surprising and potentially important new source of Arctic methane: the ocean itself. The high concentrations of the greenhouse gas recorded in the air above cracks in the ice could be evidence of yet another positive feedback on the warming climate – leading to even faster Arctic warming, the New Scientist reported. [News Track India]

More Britons than not regard subsidies for wind power development as a good deal, an opinion poll suggests. [BBC]

The European Commission will delay asking members to approve a measure that would label oil from oil sands as worse for climate change than crude oil — a temporary victory for Canada, where such oil is produced. [Washington Post]

15 Responses to April 23 News: UN Chief Calls For Doubling Of Renewable Energy By 2030

Ki-moon has been a visionary leader, but his goal to double renewable energy by 2030 sounds way too modest, and even trails current growth curves.

Political leaders, fed bad information by fossil fuel and utility companies, continue to kick the can down the road. The classic example of this is the Duke Energy CEO, who cheerleads for clean power as long as it is implemented by, say, 2050. This is a common meme, and it’s the same thing as saying “give us another few decades to pollute the atmosphere, please”.

Their protestations that it’s impossible to move faster are wrong, and are based on the assumption that it causes them to walk away from cash machines in shuttering operating coal and gas plants. What’s really impossible is to keep them belching carbon.

These people need to read Climate Progress, including the archives, and learn what the latest science is actually telling us.

What Obama is up against…. wow..$15million. Democracy in America! Obama, I am sure knows just what the stakes are…

“If we had run more ads, we could have killed Obama.” It is not a mistake he intends to make a second time. The $15 million Simmons had spent by late February dwarfs the $2.8 million he allotted to the Ayers takedown and the $3 million he contributed to the Swift Boat Veterans demolition of John Kerry four years before that.

“His use of the verb killed was meant in jest, of course, much as Foster Friess ($1.8 million in known contributions, and counting) was joking when he suggested that “gals” could practice birth control by putting Bayer aspirin between their knees. “

Some materials are so rare at quantities we need we will probably will need to mine in space.

As industry gores the space program’s impact here could also be made much cleaner while expanding it significantly.

The tech for a space elevator doesn’t exist yet for earth (existing tech would work on the moon and mars) but if is possible here it would be optimal for a clean program.

Also I think instead of a space program that empathizes a few going out to populate the universe it would also be better to have a system in place that would facilitate large numbers of people moving off earth.

At 1997 prices, a relatively small metallic asteroid with a diameter of 1.6 km (0.99 mi) contains more than 20 trillion US dollars worth of industrial and precious metals. In fact, all the gold, cobalt, iron, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, osmium, palladium, platinum, rhenium, rhodium, ruthenium, and tungsten that we now mine from the Earth’s crust, and that are essential for economic and technological progress, came originally from the rain of asteroids that hit the Earth after the crust cooled. http://planetaryresources.in/wiki/item/motive.html

By UGA News Service onlineathens.com Copyright 2012 Online Athens. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Published Monday, April 23, 2012

On the second anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon blowout, a national panel of researchers including University of Georgia marine scientist Samantha Joye is urging the federal government to reassess how it would respond to similar oil spills that might occur in the future.